Give Sorrow Words
by ambyr
Summary: As the anniversary of the battle with the Dragon King nears, Laura must balance her own desires with the duties of Princess Laura.


It was a still, hot August, and Laura could not decide whether it was better to leave her unglazed window open to catch what breeze she could or close the shutters and trust to the cold of High Castle's stone. She woke three times in the night, pushing the heavy slabs of wood back and forth to no satisfactory effect. The fourth time it was morning, or near enough. There were people moving by the shore of the lake. She squinted, but the western sky was still dark, and none of the figures resolved into anyone familiar. Sighing, she abandoned her sweat-soaked bed and went in search of breakfast.

The dining hall was full of food but almost empty of people. Laura had long since resigned herself to unsalted oatmeal. She filled a heaping bowl and, after a furtive scan, spotted Ruth's white-clad back in the far corner.

"You're up early," was Ruth's only comment as Laura slid in beside her. She sounded cross.

"Uh," said Laura. She missed Ellen's cheerful chatter most at breakfast time. "It was too hot to sleep."

Ruth sighed. "It's cooler at Heathwill." It was her last day at High Castle before she returned for the start of next term. "At least there's that to look forward to."

"Aren't you happy to go back?" Laura asked.

"Yes. No. I don't know. Ugh." Ruth pushed her cloudy black hair back from her face and pressed her palms into her temples. "I _am_ happy. I would be happier if he wasn't avoiding me."

There was no need to ask who "he" was. Laura sighed inwardly, but there was no Ellen with whom to share exasperated glances for the follies of the almost-adult. She knew better than to ask why. "Maybe he's down by the lake."

"Why would he be at the lake?"

Laura shrugged. "Everyone else is."

Ruth was already pushing her chair back when Fence said, from behind them, "All else may well be, but I doubt much that Randolph joins them."

Ruth managed to alter her motion into a smooth turn to face Fence. Laura, startled, knocked her oatmeal off the table and gazed in despair at the cracked shards of pottery.

"Why not? What are they doing?" Ruth asked, oblivious to Laura's distress. One of the castle cats came to lick up the oatmeal and bumped its head affectionately against Laura's shin as it twisted past. It was less comforting than sympathy from Ruth would have been, but better than nothing.

"Gathering flowers," Fence said. There was a strange weight to his tone.

" _Oh_ ," said Ruth.

Clearly she had learned something at Heathwill. Laura had lessons from Agatha more often than she would have liked, but they were practical things, meant to teach her how to move without tripping and sew without stabbing her fingers. She wished a third time for Ellen. It sounded like the sort of thing Ellen might have made up and neglected to share.

"Indeed," Fence said gravely. "And know you now, then, why Randolph seeks his own company."

"'Minions of the Green Caves have no family save the leaves,'" Ruth rattled off by rote, "'and Blue Sorcerers none but Shan's fellows.'" She frowned. "But surely Conrad has other family."

Fence hesitated. "None living." His gaze flickered briefly toward Laura as he spoke, and she flinched. She did not like to be reminded of her namesake's death. She disliked as well when the others spoke over her head. It happened more now, she felt, that Patrick and Ellen were gone, leaving a gulf in age between her and Ted and Ruth, rather than a staircase.

"Fence?" Laura asked, when it became clear that Ruth would rather pick ferociously at her breakfast while she thought than speak. "Why _are_ they gathering flowers?"

Fence's brows drew together, but he answered readily enough. "For the graves of those who fell against the Dragon King. Their kin placed flowers beneath the soil when they were buried; it hath been a year since the battle, now, and thus time to bring their grief to the surface and let it free."

Laura knew, when she thought about it, that it was the anniversary of the battle. But she had been trying not to remember, not to remind herself of that awful day when she ran to save Ted and couldn't. And Ted had come back. Conrad hadn't. She remembered placing flowers in his grave with Ellen, when they had still been pretending to be the royal children, Conrad's daughters. She had never felt any real grief for him; even believing he was their father, he had ignored them, leaving them entirely to Agatha and Benjamin's care. It struck her as a poor way to be a parent. But Randolph had cared. She could picture him now, standing in crowd, watching with his face as blank as he could make it while they buried his brother—who wasn't his brother, because wizards pledged to the Green and Blue schools acknowledged no kin.

 _Give sorrow words; the grief that does not speak whispers the o'er-fraught heart and bids it break_ , said Princess Laura quietly in her mind.

"I'll go," Laura said, before she could think better of it. Fence gave her an inquiring look. "I can gather flowers for Conrad."

"You are not his blood," Fence said gently.

"But I'm why he's here, aren't I? Why his body was brought back to High Castle. Because you thought I was his daughter."

"'It is so," Fence agreed. "But that masquerade is over. Tell me true, mourn you him as kin?"

"No," Laura said. "But Randolph does. And he can't. So I'll do it."

Fence studied her a moment. "It will have the form, but not the substance," he said doubtfully. "But perhaps it is better so than to leave one grave abandoned entire while the others are attended to."

"Better for Randolph," Ruth agreed. She was giving Laura a very odd look. Laura ducked her head away from it and focused on the glittering folds of Fence's robe instead.

"Do I need particular flowers?" Laura asked Fence, then wished she had bit her tongue instead. Half the names of the flowers of the Hidden Land were still strange to her, and the other half muddled themselves in her head.

"Those that feel needful to you," was all Fence said.

It should have made Laura less anxious, but somehow, it only made her worries grow.

* * *

The grass by the shore of the lake was well-trampled by the mourners who had been seeking flowers since before dawn. There was an occasional buttercup, low to the ground and hidden in the grass, and once a single half-squashed clover, but nothing, Laura thought sadly, that felt "needful." She was already regretting her impulsive offer.

 _You got me into this_ , she thought fiercely, _so help_. But Princess Laura, as she almost always did, stayed silent.

She wandered away from the castle toward the forest where she had twice, now, hunted the unicorn. This year Margaret had played the maiden, with, Laura thought loyally, less grace than Ellen, but more wild enthusiasm. It had been a longer hunt, with the unicorn less quick to be brought to bay, and by the end Laura had been covered in scrapes and scratches from falling and tangling with bushes. But the sense of wonder—and it was no less wondrous the second time than the first—when she finally saw the beast had pushed all that from her mind.

Today, there were no unicorns. The forest always felt empty when the hunt was not in progress, although the underbrush twitched with birds and chipmunks and she could hear others calling from high among the branches. It had a hollow feel, like when you tapped against a wall with a secret chamber beyond it. She supposed that made sense; the unicorn's garden was hidden somewhere, folded away behind the trees, unreachable except in season. The thought made her shiver.

There were flowers aplenty under the shadowed branches. Tiny pink and yellow stars winked at her from sheltered, moss-carpeted nooks between the massive tree roots, and there were still some white blossoms on the brambles mixed with the berries. She did not notice them until she had walked into the hedge, and by then she was too focused on disentangling herself and sucking at the bloody scratches on her hands to consider whether they were what she was searching for.

She came out of the hedge at last, two fingers still in her mouth, to find the path had vanished. Laura froze and turned on her heel, searching in every direction, but there was no sign of its beaten earth, only undisturbed undergrowth as far as she could see.

Laura closed her eyes and listened, but if there was a unicorn laughing at her it was doing so in silence.

When she opened her eyes, the path was still missing. But she saw, some paces beyond her, a flash of red. On inspection, it was the same brilliant red flower she had fallen into on the day of her first unicorn hunt. She was sure it had not been there before she had walked into the hedge—it, or the hoof print dug deep into the soft earth at its base.

"All right," she said to the silent trees. A chipmunk chittered back at her, its tone lecturing, as she bent to pluck three stalks.

There was another hoof print a few paces further on. She followed them slowly, painstakingly out of the forest. The sun rose higher as she walked, shifting the patterns of shadow cast by the leaves. She hoped the unicorns knew what they were doing.

* * *

Laura saw the glint of the lake between the trees three times before she found the gate on the graveyard hill. It was nearly noon, and the brilliant reflection of sun on still water made her eyes tear up each time. She acquired another scrape, this time across her eyebrow, but managed miraculously not to drop the flowers.

Unicorns, she thought dourly, were clearly not to be trusted with directions.

The gate, when she reached it at last, was open, and the green grass beyond crowded with people. Each held an armful of flowers—irises, wood gentian, violets, and even the buttercups Laura had rejected. She glanced doubtfully down at her own scant three stems, and hoped she was not somehow giving insult to Conrad.

"You look like you've been through the wars," said Ruth. She was standing just inside the gate with Randolph, not touching him but close enough that she might well have been before she spotted her cousin. Laura elected not to think about it. "Here." She drew a handkerchief out of one pocket and patted absently at Laura's forehead.

Randolph's eyes were restive, flicking across the crowd. He looked at last at Laura, and his gaze sharpened at the flowers in her hand.

"What—?" he asked, and then Fence was there.

"The hour is nearly here," he told Laura. "Shall I show you the way?"

She remembered where the grave was, and even if she had not she could have found it without him; it was the only one not already ringed by mourners. But she was grateful for his steady hand at her elbow, and the bulk of his robe shielding her from Randolph's puzzled gaze. She wondered, for the first time, whether Randolph would find her gesture not touching but presumptuous. She wished she had thought of it before it was too late to be useful.

Conversations between the mourners gradually stilled as the sun climbed higher in the sky. Laura could hear the wind through the trees now, thin and mournful, and a few incongruously cheerful birds. She shifted her grip on the flowers.

"Time," said Fence in her ear. She did not question how he knew that the sun had reached its peak, only let the brilliant red stalks drop—one, two, three—onto the grassy soil. All around her, others were doing the same.

For a moment, the world hung still. And then, as it did when the unicorn hunt reached its end, the forest _changed_. Laura had wondered at times why the graveyard was deep within the forest, not sheltered by the castle walls; it seemed inconvenient, impractical. Now she knew; it was of a piece with it, as magical as the rest. The cut blossoms cast on the graves shivered and took root, growing upward in a profusion of colors. Red, violet, yellow, white—it was more than merely the flowers gathered today, Laura realized. There were too many for that, and there were things growing that had not been in anyone's arms. These were the flowers cast beneath the ground at the burial, springing forth until the gravestones were veiled entirely and they stood, not in a graveyard, but in a garden.

 _"They should have put the flowers on top of the dirt,"_ she remembered Ellen saying. _"This way they're just wasted."_ She wished Ellen was there to see that she had been wrong.

Wrong about the others, but not about their own. While vines surged and twined from every other grave, Conrad's stayed a simple patch of grass.

Fence, beside her, squeezed her shoulder. "Twas well done to try," he said softly.

Laura dug her nails into her palms and tried not to cry. She could not bear to turn and look at Randolph. She had thought she might help comfort him; now, standing before the unchanged grave, she felt like she was only reminding him of his sorrow.

 _To weep is to make less the depth of grief_ , Princess Laura whispered.

Laura blinked, and the tears she had been holding back sprang free. As they touched Conrad's grave, the red flowers shivered, took root, and grew.

"Oh," said Laura, startled, and then rubbed hastily at her eyes as more tears fell. They were not, she felt in some sense, her tears, but Princess Laura's.

"It is not wrong to weep," Fence said. "Let go your grief. It is the purpose of the ritual."

"But I'm not—it isn't—"

"Everyone can master a grief but he that has it," Fence said, and squeezed her shoulder until the tears were done.

When her eyes were dry, she looked up to see Ruth and Randolph, moved away from the shadow of the wall.

"An you have let so much water fall, I thought more might be called for as a restorative," Randolph said gravely, a cup extended toward her. His eyes were dry, but his hands trembled. "I thank you," he added, too quiet for any but her to hear.

Laura's hands were, for perhaps the first time in her life, perfectly steady. She took the cup, glanced down into its depths, and saw, for a moment, a vision: the Princess Laura, smiling.

"You're welcome," Laura told Randolph—told her namesake. She drank deeply. When she gazed into the cup again, there was only her reflection. The Princess Laura's carefully arranged locks no longer overlaid her own tangled hair. But her hands were still steady when she set the cup aside, unbroken, on the gravestone, among the riot of flowers.


End file.
